‘Keeping the culture’: Ukrainian egg art rich Easter tradition
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
St. Peter and St. Paul parishioners begin crafting pysanky eggs in January, in preparation of the much-anticipated annual egg sale, which was held April 10. This year, the church sold more than 1,500 pysanky and other traditional Ukrainian eggs in less than two hours.
After warming the metal tip in the candle flame, a pysanky egg decorator dips her kistka into hard beeswax. The beeswax is used to draw the intricate, symmetrical designs on the traditional Ukrainian Easter eggs.
Sophia Himme, 8, of Scott Township, follows a penciled design with her beeswax-covered kistka during the pysanky egg-decorating workshop. Himme said drawing lines proved more challenging than she imagined.
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Delia Veschi, of Observatory Hill, Pittsburgh, and a handful of friends turned out to support Ukraine at the annual pysanky egg-decorating workshop.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Rachel Losego, of Heidelberg, helps Johanna Rimsky and Becky Whipkey, of South Hills, with their pysanky egg decorating. Rimsky and Konesky spent the afternoon together with Mary Konesky learning the art of pysanky.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
The five stages of pysanky were on display April 2. A new layer of wax, designs and egg dye was added throughout the process and, at the end, the built-up wax was removed to reveal an intricate, colorful and symmetrical pysanky egg.
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The workshop at St. Peter and St. Paul was Linda Grimm’s first foray into pysanky egg decorating. Grimm said drawing straight lines was a challenge, but she was happy to be out supporting the Ukrainian community.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Mary Wichterman, of North Strabane, guides the kistka along her pysanky design. Wichterman attends St. Peter and St. Paul’s pysanky egg sale annually, and this was the second workshop she has attended.
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Mary Wichterman, left, and Linda Grimm, heat the metal tips of their kistky before dipping the tools into hard beeswax and drawing a design on their Easter eggs. Both women said learning the art of pysanky egg decorating was challenging but worthwhile.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
The workshop held April 2 wasn’t Kristin Gottron’s first pysanky rodeo. Gottron, of Dormont, and her friend, Marie Sydlik, decorated brown psyanky under the instruction of advanced decorating teacher Tracey Sally.
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Tracey Sally gently washes away a layer of wax during the pysanky egg workshop at St. Peter and St. Paul Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Sally laughed that although the community came out to learn Ukrainian tradition, the teaching aspect of the workshop was a family affair: she, her husband and her mother-in-law all led students in the art of pysanky.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Roseanne Schwartzmille, right, thought her granddaughter would enjoy learning to decorate pysanky eggs, and signed them both up for the workshop at St. Peter and St. Paul Ukrainian Orthodox church. Schwartzmille said learning the tradition’s history was interesting, and Sophia Himme is looking forward to trying out pysanky techniques on her Easter eggs this year.
There’s more to a pysanky egg than fine lines and delicate designs.
The meaning of a traditional Ukrainian Easter egg is as rich as the colors on the handcrafted eggs themselves.
“Everything about it is significant,” said Pat Sally, of Scott Township. “The symbols on the egg have meaning. The colors have meaning. The egg has meaning. Everything about it has to do with Easter and the springtime.”
The name, too, is symbolic. Pysanky is derivative of the Ukrainian word “pysaty,” which means “to write” – and, in essence, that is what the more than 50 men and women gathered inside St. Peter and St. Paul Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Carnegie did April 2: They wrote with beeswax.
For more than 50 years, the church has, in the weeks leading up to Easter Sunday, hosted pysanky egg-decorating workshops in the community room. Attendees dip kistky (the plural of “kistka,” a pencil-like tool with a fine, metal tip) into flickering candle flames. The hot tip of each individual kistka is pressed into hard beeswax and dragged along smooth, fresh eggs to create symmetrical designs.
“I think most of the people that are helping in here, that probably does go back either to learning down here or learning within their own family,” said Sally, who learned the art of pysanky from her grandparents at age 5 or 6.
Sally said her grandmother used a more rudimentary kistka crafted from a heavy stick found outside her home. She affixed a metal tip to the end, and taught Sally the symbolism and art of the traditional Ukrainian Easter egg.
Many other teachers at this year’s workshop have similar fond memories of learning pysanky.
“My dad used a pencil,” Marlane Pawlosky, of Canonsburg, recalled. “He’d stick a straight pin in the eraser, and you dip it into the melted wax and you’d write on the egg.”
Those raised in Ukrainian households understand the beauty in the long, delicate pysanky egg-decorating process, but some workshop attendees were surprised at how difficult forming lines of beeswax on an egg proved to be.
“Mine are crooked,” laughed Mary Wichterman, of North Strabane Township, pointing to the lines on her egg.
Linda Grimm, of Washington, who attended the event with Wichterman, said drawing straight lines was the hardest part of the afternoon. But the challenge was worth it for both women.
“It’s important that we support, as Linda says, Ukraine,” Wichterman said. “But it’s the heritage of this area. You can tell the people have really kept the traditions, and that’s important.”
As the women looked around the room, Grimm noted with a smile how many young people were bent over their eggs, carefully lining the smooth surface in hot beeswax.
“They pass it down from generation to generation. You do see some young people here. That’s encouraging,” Grimm said.
At one table a 91-year-old attendee sat across from the youngest person in attendance: Sophia Himme, 8, of Scott Township.
“I like to draw a lot,” said Himme, who spent the afternoon decorating with her grandma, Roseanne Schwartzmille. “Trying to make the straight lines is probably the hardest part.”
Himme is not Ukrainian Orthodox, but she is already looking forward to next year’s workshop. She plans to implement at home the things she learned during the workshop.
“At Easter, we always dye eggs, but we never do designs like this one,” said Himme. “I’m gonna try something new this year.”
Sally said the church hosts workshops at local libraries and other community spaces throughout the year. The event at St. Peter and St. Paul, she said, is always the largest, but participation has dwindled in recent years.
“We don’t have as many people working on the eggs now as we used to, but we try to keep it up as a tradition in the church, try to get enough of the young people,” she said.
She, Pawlosky and the other instructors were happy with the region’s interest and thrilled by the number of eggs crafted during the event. They were also excited to share Ukrainian culture with the community.
“That’s Ukraine,” said Pawlosky, watching an older woman drag her kistka along an egg. “That is a Ukrainian tradition. It continues what my dad taught me, what his mother taught him. Keeping the culture.”